This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Toronto needs more housing options to keep top talent

Chris Dunne and his fiancée, both 28, are already part of Toronto’s booming condo market as renters. But with plans for a wedding next year and children down the road, the couple envision a ground-level home with a patch of green to call their own.

The problem is they’re part of a cohort for whom housing options are scarce.

A leading Toronto business group is warning that unless that situation changes, the region could be compromising its ability to attracted talented professionals.

Research for the Toronto Region Board of Trade shows half of those aged 18 to 39 want to own a detached house and they want it in the region’s priciest market — Toronto, where detached re-sale homes cost $1.6 million on average in April.

Toronto has an abundance of costly detached homes and small condos. There isn't much in between the two extremes. (COLE BURSTON)

An Environics survey for the board showed that 81 per cent of the group that is expecting to buy a home in the next year, don’t want to live in a condo and 69 per cent want a house with at least three bedrooms.

While Toronto has plenty of one-bedroom-plus-den condos, demand for the kind of housing most residents want — low-rise homes with some outdoors space — is driving up prices, she said.

“We need to rebalance what we’re building to diversify our supply to meet the needs of all residents,” said De Silva. “The challenge we face right now is a lack of supply of larger condos and missing middle housing options.”

Article Continued Below

She suggested that the city or province could make it legal to add just one laneway house, coach house or duplex per hectare to areas that are currently zoned only for detached homes. The addition of one such home per hectare would accommodate 45,000 people in Toronto, said De Silva.

The (TRBOT) online survey of 387 Toronto region residents ages 18 to 39 was part of a larger Environics Focus GTA survey of 1,000 adults.

The research was done between April 19 and May 5, and has a margin of error within 3 per cent for the larger sample, and within 5 per cent for the smaller sample.

Dunne, a business development manager for downtown marketing firm Elemental, and his partner Nicole Furey, a social worker in a hospital emergency department, aren’t fussy.

He says they would be happy with a two-bedroom home in an attached house, maybe a duplex, as long as it’s got a patch of grass.

“The big thing is just having that green space to call your own,” he said.

But it’s difficult to see how they will get there from the 800 sq. ft., seventh-floor unit where they live with their two dogs near Spadina Rd. and Queen’s Quay.

In Toronto, there isn’t much between the two extremes of publicly funded housing and multimillion-dollar homes, he said.

“There’s very, very few options. It just doesn’t seem like there’s anything in that middle ground right now,” said Dunne.

The couple might consider moving to the suburbs if that was their only option. But that wasn’t the dream when they came from Newfoundland about 18 months ago.

“We moved here to be in Toronto,” he said, adding that none of their friends have purchased property in the city, and those who do own bought years ago.

But how the couple will save the money to buy a home is an open question. They own property they are leasing back in Newfoundland. Dunne says they will be trying to build up equity in that while they live in Toronto.

Although, Dunne likes to have a plan, he says, “it just seems like there’s no end in sight as to how it can all pan out.”

More from The Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com